[dev1049] New weapon skills

[xiozen]

I really dislike the way they did these WS. The fact that you are stuck unlocking only 3 or if you are to unlock more you rightfully gimp them all. You can only be on one weapon skill table at a time so this is just trying to force players to specialize on fewer jobs.

I personally disagree. Even though its restrictive; I appreciate and commend SE on taking the final step (from 96-99 in levels) and requiring some form of specialization. If you walk around Lower Jeuno and generally look at the characters standing around the Abyssea NPCs, you'll generally see cookie-cutter... meaning, if you have a Verethragna or Revenant Fists +2 via Walk of Echoes, you'll be using Victory Smite... if you have an Almace or Badelaire +2 you'll be using Chant du Cygne...etc. Given the way these have been introduced will (at least in the beginning, who knows what future updates will add) require players to focus on at least 3 weapon skills to strengthen and make VERY powerful with full merits, I believe requiring 1million merits to max out one. So grinding... yea... but I personally have been looking for a reason to get back to meriting... I know many folks were getting very close to maxing out merits on their mains and maxing out merits on other jobs they generally don't use just because they were running out of options when it came down to meriting and spending limit points. This is an excellent addition to using those maxed out limit points and this will take a lot of time, assuming you want to focus on maxing out the weapon skills instead of just unlocking more than 3.

[Raelia]

Hey I just do Apollyon NW DRK/DNC solo (no bosses though) so what do I know?

[Economizer]

One of the worst mistakes SE has ever pulled (even the dev team is human) is making job abilities and spells that are unlocked with merits. Yes, having effects improved by merits may have great potential, but it was always a bad idea to have the base version unlocked by merits when that means that players have to choose between being able to perform each one with mediocrity or being able to perform one or two the way they were made to be used.

While I could explain the things that were wrong with the merit system at length, it basically boils down to a few basic points. This is a very different MMO from others. Part of this is because we have a job system that allows people to do everything with one job given enough time and effort. This is very unlike many other MMOs where you are locked to your class from day one, and have to get a new character in order to perform a different role. The uniqueness and intelligent design of the jobs system in FFXI should not be beaten on its face any more then it already has.

While the "Other" category merits were a nice boost to characters, and stat boosts (STR/DEX/VIT/AGI/INT/MND/CHR/MP/HP) are acceptable and even neat like race selections were, and even Skill Boosts are still in the range of okay, the individual class merits at times pushed past this boundary. Still, class choices were at least restricted to classes, so at least if you liked to play as a more offensive version of one class and a more defensive version of another, you could tailor to this.

Basically, bringing merits into this to compare is wrong, because previous merit categories have been widely different - even when they strongly enforced differing play styles, they were at least limited to their individual jobs.

When it comes to Weapon Skills, few people if any really want to sacrifice the potential they should be at in order to be able to use them all. And I'm sure the dev team worked and toiled very hard on each and every animation... which makes me wonder - why would they deliberately decide to implement a system that encourages players to never use 11 of the 14 animations that they designed? This would be like making players decide between being able to go to Sea or Sky exclusively, unless they payed a non-refundable deposit of one million experience points!

Further, this especially punishes niche weapon skills and weapons, especially on unpopular jobs. You basically have to start choosing between weapons altogether, rather then letting the situation let you choose your job then your weapon. Like to solo on one class that is widely different from the ones you party with? Too bad because you can't get the WS you want without being gimp in parties!

All of this is a terrible price to pay for an artificial limitation on being able to enjoy all of the new content to its fullest. Players will already be paying one million merit points per weapon skill, which while this may be a fair price, is a steep one. But it is not as steep as the price of gimping your ability to get into parties and events with jobs you've leveled and geared just because you couldn't justify making that job's weapon skill your third weapon skill over another.

Basically, I see no reason to cap out this particular merit category. But I know that sometimes the dev team is stubborn about certain things, so I'll just list a few ideas that would be better then the current plans for this. This list goes in order of the best option to the worst. Hopefully SE finds at least one of these better then the extremely limiting limit they have now.

• No point limits - the players earned their merit points, let them spend them!
• Increased point costs for increased point limits - having more then three weapon skills capped will cost progressively more to do then the first choices.
• Individual choices per job - each job has to unlock the weapon skills individually, but each job can unlock up to three.
• Twenty Point limit, with the first point in any category not counting towards maximum allocation.
• Thirty-four point limit - have an uneven amount that makes it clear that the intent is that players unlock all weapon skills and cap out five.

[Arcon]

All merit group combo caps should be lifted.

[Taint2]

Entropy is the best DRK ws simply because of Liberator.

99 Mythic pretty much rapes the scene.

Obviously, for the 99.999999% that don't have one, Torcleaver on low Defense mobs or High Attack situations and Resolution on high defense mobs.

Insurgency say hi.....don't forget the 15% WS boost it gets when used with Liberator.

The new Scythe WS is an absolute joke. Even as a career DRK I won't put a single merit into it. If MP is a problem on DRK, play better.

8hits would not be the answer, why would anyone want an 8hit WS? Give me a high fTP on a 2-4 hitter and make STR the mod.

[Soidisant]

The problem isn't that Entropy is completely garbage because as a standalone WS it is actually fairly nice. The problem is that it is not what DRK needed and SE has missed what was seemingly the perfect opportunity to pull up our damage to acceptable levels.

To me it looks like SE don't see DRK as a top tier DD. It seems like they see us as a utility DD who can do a variety of things but ultimately don't excel at overall damage except in short bursts.

[Zumi]

The problem isn't that Entropy is completely garbage because as a standalone WS it is actually fairly nice. The problem is that it is not what DRK needed and SE has missed what was seemingly the perfect opportunity to pull up our damage to acceptable levels.

To me it looks like SE don't see DRK as a top tier DD. It seems like they see us as a utility DD who can do a variety of things but ultimately don't excel at overall damage except in short bursts.

Well something tells me SE doesn't spend hours parsing fights to insure melee class balance like other companies do with their MMOs. They just add stuff without testing how it effects dps.

[Afania]

One of the worst mistakes SE has ever pulled (even the dev team is human) is making job abilities and spells that are unlocked with merits. Yes, having effects improved by merits may have great potential, but it was always a bad idea to have the base version unlocked by merits when that means that players have to choose between being able to perform each one with mediocrity or being able to perform one or two the way they were made to be used.
[/LIST]

I disagree, I think ppl in this game should have some form of specilization, and IMO merit WS is a good choice.

It's just like rl, you can't master everything in your career, if you want to master one thing you gonna sacrifice another. You can't be best musician and best lawyer+ best accoutant at once, that just doesn't work.

You get best by choosing a job, and take that path, and excel it. Those who spend most effort on this job should be the best.

Ever since Abyssea release there are no "main job" anymore, +2 is easy to get, empy is easy to get, every player has 1338 +2 jobs and empyreans, and all equally geared. If you want to make your main job stand out, it's really hard, because it doesn't take more than 3 months to grind best gears for every job you have. Even if you want to make your main job better than the rest by sacrificing your other jobs, you don't get the choice to.

And what's the point if your main job can't be better than others no matter how hard you try? You're forced to play and pimp other jobs, because if player A has 10 pimp jobs, player B only has 1, ppl would want player A in pt a lot more.

And this is not the first time SE do this with storyline gears, they've released 3 mini-expansion, which you can only pick 2 augments. I picked augment for my COR, so my BLU ended up being gimp cuz there are some other augments my BLU can benefit a lot, but I don't really care. It's my choice, I want to pimp this job and willing to sacrific other job for it. If there's another player who picked the augment for other jobs, that's totally fine. But I certainly don't want to see everyone owning 20 of mini-expansion gears and all augmented for their 20 jobs, that's just not fair because I can never make my main job stand out.

Game should be all about choices, and if you're hardcore it should be about picking a path and excel it. There are thousands of careers I wanna do irl, but in the end I can only pick one, same as jobs, it's call "jobs", that means you should be only excel at one.

[Dragoy]

I always did like the fact that I can level up all jobs on one character, instead of having to create several to do that.

I always disliked the fact that merits force you to choose things like this. I do understand the reasoning on being good at just one, and that you can indeed lower your merits and make changes. Only problem with that is the fact that you need to re-acquire them, and that's when it goes into a "bit too much" in my opinion.

That especially with the old, 10 Merit Point at once limit.
Even if you only got like half of them back to re-assign, I think it would be more OK.

But that's another subject really. Something like weapon skills becoming the same... I understand the reasoning, and sort of agree with it (a little), but no, I can't say I like it. Not that it matters... really... just saying... >.>;


Just some thoughts~

[Afania]

Further, this especially punishes niche weapon skills and weapons, especially on unpopular jobs. You basically have to start choosing between weapons altogether, rather then letting the situation let you choose your job then your weapon. Like to solo on one class that is widely different from the ones you party with? Too bad because you can't get the WS you want without being gimp in parties!

All of this is a terrible price to pay for an artificial limitation on being able to enjoy all of the new content to its fullest. Players will already be paying one million merit points per weapon skill, which while this may be a fair price, is a steep one. But it is not as steep as the price of gimping your ability to get into parties and events with jobs you've leveled and geared just because you couldn't justify making that job's weapon skill your third weapon skill over another. [/LIST]

The moment you clicked the job change botton you're already not playing your job to fullest potential. You can only play a job to fullest potential when you use it in unfavored situations, since you'd have to find a way to solve the problem and overcome weakness by trying different aspect that it's weak to. If everyone always job change because another job is more useful than this situation, you'll never be able to push your current job further.

And even if you have 20 WS unlocked and all well geared, you still won't be able to get into party and events on certain job anyways. Because certain events always favors certain job, instead of welcomes all job. Those who has NIN leveled probably uses NIN 99.9% of time in Abby, and never get a chance to play SMN even if his SMN has a Mythic. It's all the same, except if he really excel at SMN maybe he'll have more chance to use SMN in a pt.